Billion Dollar Brain (1967)

Oscar Homolka: Colonel Stok

Photos 

Quotes 

• Colonel Stok : I suppose a young man like you wouldn't know the pleasure of removing a tight collar.

  Harry Palmer : I thought Lenin called such comforts "momentary interest."

  Colonel Stok : Don't tell me what Lenin said. I touched Lenin. I stood by him in Ruzheinaya Square in July, nineteen hundred and twenty; the second congress. I touched him. Those are the words he used to describe the comforts and pleasures with which the proletariat are diverted from their more important historic mission. But I am not being diverted. Well, are you going to offer me another drink?

  Harry Palmer : In England, Colonel, the historic mission of the proletariat consists almost entirely of momentary interest.

• Colonel Stok : He was a very stupid man. A patriot, of course... very brave... During a war, such men earn medals, win victories... we are proud of them. But at such a time as now, a little bit stupid.

• Colonel Stok : You know where Shostakovich wrote that symphony? In the heart of Leningrad, in 1941. The Germans had cut them off. They were all about to die. It means a lot to us. We don't forget those times so easily.

  Colonel Stok : [looks at Palmer's bruised face]  I *warned* you, English.

  Colonel Stok : [chuckles mischievously]  Come on, you need a *drink*!

• Colonel Stok : Such fantastic dreams.

  Harry Palmer : What fantastic dreams?

  Colonel Stok : They think the Latvians are on the verge of overthrowing their tyrannical overlords. They think the people walking in the street out there are dreaming of the moment when they can become capitalist serfs again. They think we all lie awake dreaming of going to America. They think they can distribute pamphlets and gold and a vast monarchist army will materialise overnight. This is what I call fantastic dreams.

• Colonel Stok : When I was a young man we had a song: "Where tears fall, a rose will grow". Do you know that song?

  Harry Palmer : No.

  Colonel Stok : If that was true, Latvia would be a land full of roses. You've no idea what things happened here during the war. Latvia had its share of war criminals, that worked with the Nazis, even joined the SS and massacred thousands of their own countrymen.

  [they all raises their glass] 

  Colonel Stok : Down the hatch! We've dossiers on hundreds of such Latvians. You would imagine that people guilty of such terror would remain quiet. But no, these scum are the worst troublemakers.

• Harry Palmer : Mind how you go, colonel.

  Colonel Stok : Mind how *you* go. Be wise! Don't go to the meeting tomorrow. Good to see you, English.

  [departs] 

  Harry Palmer : Thanks for the warning, colonel.

• Colonel Stok : For my sins they've made me chief of security over the frozen Baltic. What a life. What a life! Vashe zdorov'ye!